The following disclosure relates to energy management, and more particularly to a premises energy management system for management of household consumer appliances, as well as other energy consuming devices and/or systems found in the home, at times called herein as accessories or network accessories. The present disclosure finds particular application to a device which controls operation of the accessories (e.g., consumer appliances, as well as other energy consuming devices and/or systems), and acts as a controller/gateway between a Utility company network and the consumer appliances, as well as other energy consuming devices and/or systems. The controller/gateway device to be discussed below is at times called herein a Home Energy Gateway (HEG).
Currently Utility companies commonly charge a flat rate for energy, but with the increasing cost of fuel prices and high energy usage during certain parts of the day, Utility companies have to buy more energy to supply consumers during peak demand. Consequently, Utility companies are beginning to charge higher rates during peak demand. If peak demand can be lowered, then a potential cost savings can be achieved and the peak load that the Utility company has to accommodate is lessened.
One proposed third party solution is to provide a system where a controller switches the actual energy supply to the appliance or control unit on and off. However, there is no active control beyond the mere on/off switching. It is believed that others in the industry cease some operations of certain appliances during on-peak time.
Additionally, some electrical Utility companies are moving to an Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) system which needs to communicate with appliances, HVAC, water heaters, etc., in a home or office building. All electrical Utility companies (more than 3,000 in the US) will not be using the same communication method and protocol to signal in the AMI system. Similarly, known systems do not communicate directly with the appliance using a variety of communication methods and protocols, nor is a modular and standard method created for communication devices to interface and to communicate selectable operational modes to the main controller of the appliance.
Home energy management (e.g., HEM) systems are being used to reduce energy consumption in homes and buildings, in a consumer friendly/compatible manner. Existing HEMs are commonly placed in one of two general categories:                In the first category, the HEM is in the form of a special custom configured computer with an integrated display, which communicates to devices in the home and stores data, and also has simple algorithms to enable energy reduction. This type of device may also include a keypad for data entry or the display may be a touch screen. In either arrangement, the display, computer and key pad (if used) are formed as a single unit. This single unit is either integrated in a unitary housing, or if the display is not in the same housing, the display and computer are otherwise connected/associated upon delivery from the factory and/or synchronized or tuned to work as a single unit.        In the second category, the HEM is in the form of a low cost router/gateway device in a home that collects information from devices within the home and sends it to a remote server and in return receives control commands from the remote server and transmits it to energy consuming devices in the home. In this category, again, as in the first, the HEM may be a custom configured device including a computer and integrated or otherwise connected/associated display (and keypad, if used) designed as a single unit. Alternately, the HEM maybe implemented as home computer such as lap top or desk top operating software to customize the home computer for this use.        
Both of the current existing types have significant disadvantages due to high consumer cost, low flexibility and increased system complexity.
The first category requires a large upfront cost to the consumer, because the cost of providing an integrated display on the HEM very expensive. In addition, the electronics required to drive the display is complex and expensive. Further, from a consumer point of view, they are forced to add one more display screen to their home in addition to the home computer, smart phones, televisions and the displays on pre-existing home devices such as thermostats, appliance displays etc.
The second category of HEM involves a substantial cost to provide the server infrastructure and data transfer. In addition, this type of HEM must be connected continuously with a remote server otherwise energy data logging and energy saving commands for the devices in the home will be lost during service disruptions. In addition, this configuration requires connection to the Internet to access and view data. Therefore this second configuration is very limiting in areas where Internet penetration is very low
These HEMs do not take into consideration that data bandwidth required to support a network of energy consuming devices is much smaller than the data bandwidth required for the networking of consumer electronics products, which is usually high bandwidth and high speed. The networking standards, including the physical layer, networking layer and application layers are therefore not optimized for the end use.
Further, consumers want to be able to view and control energy consumption information through a variety of consumer electronic devices available in the home. To enable this it is required that energy consumption and control information must be easily transferable from the networks of energy consuming devices to networks of consumer electronics devices. In addition, consumers are used to interacting with consumer electronics devices. So the consumer interaction data on a consumer electronics device should be able to flow into the network for energy consuming devices and to enable command and control of the energy consuming devices which has not been a consideration of existing systems.
The present disclosure is intended to address these and other issues.